Sweden rattled by Somali militants in its midst

Abadirh Abdi Hussein, a 25-year-old hip hop artist known by his stage name "Kadafi" stands at the entrance to a square in Rinkeby, an largely immigrant suburb on the outskirts of Stockholm, Sweden, on Friday Jan. 22, 2010. Hussein has become the best known Somali in Rinkeby because of his campaign to counter radical Islamic extremists, who he says are recruiting young members of Somali immigrant families in the Rinkeby area, for a bloody insurgency war against Somalia's government, in the Horn of Africa. (AP Photo / Karl Ritter)

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STOCKHOLM—Ten subway stops from downtown Stockholm is "little Mogadishu," a drab suburb of the Swedish capital where radical Islamists are said to be recruiting the sons of Somali immigrants for jihad in the Horn of Africa.

Police and residents say about 20 have joined al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked group waging a bloody insurgency against Somalia's government, and many of them came from the suburb of Rinkeby -- the heart of Sweden's Somali community. According to SAPO, the Swedish state security police, five of them have been killed and 10 are still at large in Somalia.

The issue has gained notice at a time of worsening fears of Islamic radicalism in the Scandinavian countries, home to more than 40,000 Somalis who have fled their war-ravaged homeland. These fears sharpened with the Jan. 1 attack by a Somali immigrant in Denmark on a cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.

"It's a small group but they have power," said Abadirh Abdi Hussein, a 25-year-old hip-hop artist and "110-percent Muslim" who has become the best known Somali in Rinkeby because of his campaign to counter al-Shabab's influence. "People don't speak up against them. They don't dare."

Al-Shabab, which wants to install strict Islam in Somalia, controls much of the desert nation's southern region and large parts of the capital. Intelligence officials say it is recruiting foreign fighters, including from the Somali diaspora in Europe and North America. U.S. authorities say as many as 20 recruits have left Minnesota.

In Sweden, police say they can do little to stop them leaving for Somalia unless they can prove that they are conspiring to commit terrorism. Unlike the U.S., Sweden has not put al-Shabab on any terrorism list.

"Legally you can't prosecute anyone, neither the youth nor those who urged them to go," said Johnny Lindh, police superintendent in the precinct that includes Rinkeby.

Lindh said police have been in touch with several devastated parents who said their sons secretly joined al-Shabab and traveled to Somalia without telling their families.

A 24-year-old Rinkeby resident, who came to Sweden with his family in 1991, and who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone, said his uncle was with a group that left Rinkeby in mid-2008. According to the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing for his family's safety, the uncle said that he was traveling within Sweden and would only be gone a few weeks.

Speaking in Swedish, the man said that he, too, was approached repeatedly by an al-Shabab recruiting agent, but turned him down.

"He used to ask, like, 'have you ever thought about the way things are in Somalia? Do you want to help?' You knew what he was getting at: jihad," he said.Continued...